The CIA World Fact Book gives the following estimates for the unemployment rate in Germany:
6.5% (2012 est.)
7.1% (2011 est.)
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While the rate dropped a bit, seems high enough to merit investing in training citizens who are out of work. I suspect many may have dated skills, or lack skills, but there must be a few that can be trained up, at least for more entry type positions.
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Such an approach could sidestep costs associated with relocation, language barriers, etc. (although there may be higher training costs for helping people change careers or stretch themselves in entering a harder field?).
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And such training enables a few more in the community to earn a living, generate income that leads to some additional revenues, etc.

There is a book out by a German politician, writer, and former member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Thilo Sarrazin, which addresses the problem of education, educability and flexibility in a very rational manner, "Germany abolishes itself". Even tho it was a bestseller, he was publicly 'crucified' for it.

Don't be so naive. There is no skills shortage. Citizens are simply being replaced by cheap non-status slave labour.
They are not immigrants, they have no rights, they are paid a fraction of what a citizen expects and they can be deported like a pieces of wood.
These workers are the property of their employers. Anyone can buy slaves now by financially supporting the winning political party that prints the work permits.
Grow up.

if you are looking for someone to blame, i would start with people who have the terms "Human Resources" or "Human Capital" in their resumes.
or you can simply move to another country and become a non-status worker. prosperity is around the corner!

The one true "winner" in this video is the little girl. She is learning a second language at a very adaptable age. This bi-lingual girl as a young woman will be an immense asset not so much for Germany or Spain but for Europe and most importantly for herself. The EU has been two decades late to the real ground work for the education of skilled employees. And that is a much larger multi lingual society.

As long as the EU continues to base its system of integration more on the EU version of the Americans "Articles of Confederation" instead of the US Constitution the EU will be now and for a long time an economic mess.

The EU wide counter to that is to provide a selection of foreign language options to all children in the EU from ages 5 to 12. Preferably many will know up to four languages by the age of 12.

The success of the US, over and above its natural resources, isolation from destructive wars (for the most part) and ever expending immigration pool has been the American willingness to move.

From 1946 to 1980 one in five households or 20% moved each and every year. Not on average but every year. Even with effective tax rates approaching 90% for many Americans, companies got started, employees got hired and American boomed. And people moved to start those companies and start those jobs.

Then, in 1980 it all stopped. The number of households moving each year dropped dramatically. It has never recovered. It is also during this exact same time that the middle and lower income brackets of the US lost all advancement in relation to overall income and wealth. That too has never recovered.

It has come to the point that literally millions of Americans cannot afford to move either because they cannot sell their current home or two income families make the transition for both that much harder.

And it is this America that finds it cannot attract skilled employee's in certain areas of the US while other areas languish in high skilled labor unemployment.

In the world that is the German economy it is nice to have a video about 20 some Spaniards moving to Germany in the coming year as a "light at the end of the tunnel" for German success. 20. A few more months at that rate and the problem will be totally solved.

What is not covered (I am sure for brevity and clarity) is that the corresponding number of Germans that are not then moving to another part of the EU to pursue their economic or family goals. The concept does not even enter their minds to do so.

Until one in five EU households, or something approaching that, even consider moving each year to improve there lives the EU is indeed stuck in a demographic malaise from which an aging population or low fertility rates are truly not the problem.

Finally I have become aware this past week of a 5 star international hotel chain that is opening a new property in an Eastern European country. While the manager speaks 4 languages fluently he does not speak the native language of the new country. This however has not stopped his company nor himself from jumping in, feet first, to tackle the important assignment and using the skills he has developed world wide.

This is the attitude, skill set and blueprint for the EU for the next few decades.

Thank you, gltoffic. In a thoughtful, aesthetically appealing way you laid out here a constructive contribution to this debate. Yes, I noticed a similar development here in the U.S. But still, most Americans aren't buried in the same state they were born.

People in the US moved around quite a bit after 1980. In fact there were at least two big housing booms (one in the 1980s and then in the 2000s). I also found the late 1990s to be quite an active time for real estate (when I purchased my first property).
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As for people being trapped in their homes because of being underwater with the mortgage, that is really a recent phenomenon, dating back to the Great Recession in 2008, and another unfortunate outcome of the 2000s housing bubble.
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As for skilled workers moving about - well many have moved out to the various areas where there are energy booms unfolding. Similarly, there has been movement down to the south over the years, where new factories and industrial facilities tend to be set up (think parts and auto plants in Tennessee, South Carolina, etc.). Who knows, maybe Texas will convince more of Silicon Valley to transplant more operations to Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc.?

I am not saying that people in the US have not continued to move. As you have rightly pointed out there are examples not only in many cities but across the country. The point I was trying to make is that it was not anywhere near the 20% annual numbers up until the 1980's. The early 1980's were both the time of a recession with very high interest rates in the US, (the prime rate topped 18%), it was also the period of great acceptance of Title IX for sports in high schools and the advancement of two income households. Between high interest rates, children become active in more and more sports in schools and two income families, moving slowed dramatically.

I think you will find that a good number of people in the "boom" industries after 1980 were more likely to move. High Tech, construction, people moving because of early retirement packages etc.
The other factor in home movement in the early years was the S & L fiasco when millions lost their homes then as well.

But again, nation wide, the level of 20% has never been reached again.

You're quite right about being buried in another state. I just read an article in another national magazine this week about the rise in cremations because of that very trend.

Again it is not that people did not continue to move, just not to anywhere near the volume they did pre 1980.

I know from very unscientific and personal stories by Europeans that I know that, for instance, their parents have always lived in the same house or apartment. Oft times it was inherited by one of the spouses.

I also know of, for example, a German friend of mine from near Frankfurt who now works in Hamburg. he would, however, never even consider living in Southern or Eastern Germany nor any European country that did not speak English.

Language and culture are true for the broad view of the US. I however live in a section of LA where almost all of my neighbors first languages are Korean or Spanish. If you ride the bus the TransitTV is in Spanish.
There is also a great divide among conservative and liberal counties. I have either lived in virtually all Republican or all Democratic counties when I have moved.
You will also find by state that say the top 10 Television shows of each state are dramatically different than any of their neighboring states or many across the country.
I do again defer to your observation that language is a great barrier in Europe. Thus my initial comment about the true winner in the video being the little girl learning a second language at such a small age.

On a quick side note, I have noted your comments about not promoting immigration to densely populated nations in the EU. In a logical world many Europeans would be moving to Ukraine or Russia where there are vast amounts of empty land and the population of both countries is not only aging fast but declining rapidly.

I happen to read a fascinating book this past fall about "management" of Nazi Germany's foreign conquests in World War II. It seems that for years the Nazi's had pressed hard for "living space" in the east. However when the war started they were literally shocked to find that few Germans wanted to go outside of Germany to the new lands.

"Language together with culture are still the decisive common denominators. America has it both, a common language and a shared culture."
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I could't agree more:)
Therefore it is a matter of fact that language is dividing and building contrast between the different countries and their culture.
Consequently Europe never has been divided that much and that deep as it is actually:)
The whole system and fiction of the EU can only fail and will disband.

I live in Midwest USA. We have family living all over the United States. This is why I am quite familiar with the situation here. Aside from fully Hispanic pockets, the main communication language to and from public authorities and within the public education system is still English (despite that some administrative bodies can be addressed bilingually).

This situation is completely different in Europe. If a Dutch family wants to resettle to Italy, they'll be totally lost language-wise unless they speak Italian or use an interpreter. This is somewhat different now in parts of Spain where British and German retirees have developed some kind of infrastructure within their respective expat communities.

I don't know what to answer to your "living space in the east" example. My view on the subject is that nobody wants to to expose his/her family to war-ridden landscapes. Plus all young family men were in military service anyway, I guess. This would have been different if these lands would have been empty and/or already pacified.

In general people of working age relocate for partnership or family reasons or for jobs. If people are happy with where they are, why should they relocate?

German is spoken in three of the economically most successful countries in Europe: Austria, Germany and Switzerland. And widely understood in the Alsace part of France, in Luxembourg, in Holland and parts of Belgium. With an estimate of 100–110 million native speakers, German is by far the most spoken mother tongue in Europe. One would think that this is the most normal 'second language' besides English to learn for the hard-hit peripheral Europeans.

However, with some astonishment I learned from a recent press release of the European Commission's EURYDICE that in the now economically most severely hit countries in Europe's southern periphery, German isn't even taught as a second language, while German is particularly highly popular in central and eastern European countries.

This is, in my opinion, the main reason why German companies prefer to invest in central and eastern European countries instead of in the ailing southern periphery . . . and this is also the reason why virtually millions of central and eastern Europeans resettled into Germany's labor market, while the same move is much harder for southern Europeans (who usually learn French as a first or second foreign language, not German).

Well you are absolutely right.
But that does not change anything that German is almost forbidden in countries like France, Italy, Greece, Spain or Portugal.
I think this is the result of an extremely long time of official Germanophobia which has been enforced in most European countries over centuries.
German language is absolutely a no-go in all Western countries and Western cultures.
I just want to remind the extreme anti-German training of little children in Great Britain and some other English speaking countries.
Germanophobia has a very long tradition in English speaking countries and has been enforced by all British governments over the last 70 years with immense power.
And my experience in Alsatia and Lorraine in regard of German is extremely bad.
Perhaps you will find a few elderly people in some small villages who understand German but in general for the young French German is no topic at all.
Even in Switzerland you find the same development and German speaking Swiss do have the very same problem with their French speaking co-citizens who usually never would learn only a single word in German.

In general I do not see any problem from the German pov if the rest of the is boycotting German language and culture.
Actually we can even say that it is an immense benefit for Germany by keeping off jobless Europeans from immigration to Germany.
In the Eastern countries there are waiting millions of young and very high qualified people who are longing for coming to Germany and who usually speak excellent German and do not have any problem finding good jobs.
Let the Italians, French, Spaniards, Greeks or Portuguese better stay at home in their warm and cosy countries where they do not need a foreign language:)

German is the third most learned foreign language in Portugal and has been so for over a century, when several German families moved here in search of aristocratic titles and easy money . We even have a German descent MP . Obviously a Christian democrat. Hardly says anything of worth. In fact, he hardly says anything at all. I guess he must be scared that people figure out his full name is fully German. Ouchie.

About 10 years ago or so one of the big German weeklies had an article on the country's low birthrate where one woman was quoted as saying that having kids was for suckers - the family has all the trouble and expense of raising a child, and then when the child is grown, he contributes to the support of the entire society, not just his parents. Which is of course true. Perhaps government pensions should be adjusted to account for this - allowing parents to retire at a lower age, or to receive a higher amount to account for the benefit they have provided the society. (Assuming their kids are not being incarcerated by the state, perhaps.)

You sound like one of those losers who'd rather live off the taxes of others, collecting welfare before picking up a shovel to support themselves with their own work. This kind of 'dottore mentality' knocked whole societies to where they are now ... which then demand from others to be 'bailed out'.

BTW, according to www.vdi-nachrichten.com every 9th engineer in Germany has migratory background; but, of course, they need to understand the language at first.

Some conclusions of this feature story are not quite right. I agree that Germany's workers need to retire later and that the employment rate of women needs to increase substantially, but it is definitely not primarily a question of convincing workers to work longer or women to work full hours, but a question of ageism and inflexibility of German companies. It is still incredibly hard for older qualified (!) workers to find a job or for women to arrange more flexible working hours with their employers. Most German companies still live in different times.

If you think that companies anyplace else arrange more flexible working hours with their employers if they have other choices then you're misguided.

Companies do this only when it's either to the firm's advantage or if a law forces them to do it.

As any other asset, a workforce comes under 'resources', in this case "human resources". Shortage of qualified labor can create a situation which triggers more workplace flexibility. In Germany such situation has arrived.

Now, more than 350 companies and institutions, with human resource responsibility for around 2 million employees, have come together to play an active role in shaping demographic change. They organized themselves in a non-profit network of companies for companies which has become a nationwide demography network (Demographie Netzwerk e.V. or, short, ddn); ddn aims to make demographic change a priority.

Its members comprise companies of all sizes, as well as associations, consultancy forms, academic institutions and municipal authorities. In ten “Golden Rules”, the ddn member companies commit, among other things, to non-discriminatory, age-neutral human resource policy, a balanced work-force age structure, holistic health promotion for all employees and the transfer of knowledge between generations. The whole scheme runs under the motto, "Not macht erfinderisch" (Necessity begets ingenuity).

So when the robots go on sale and eventually the family dies off; do the robots pay taxes? Do robots have rights? I'm trying not to laugh too! Eventually this ridiculous scenario becomes reality in modern civility.

I am of the opinion that 'old', densely populated countries should not seek GDP growth through immigration. If deemed necessary 'replacement-immigration' by skilled, culturally similar people might be encouraged.
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It can reasonably be argued that 'growth-through-population-growth' and 'growth-through-immigration' have their natural limits, especially in 'old' countries that suffer already heavily from "population pollution" (as e.g. Britain, Germany and Holland do in Europe).
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This is also why I believe that Germany's approach has no real alternative. Germany practices a strict 'replacement-immigration' policy by reducing on the one hand the influx of random 'asylum immigration' and encouraging at the same time the immigration of skilled or professional people on the other.
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As we know, skilled and professional people are in possession of their educational status because they believe in middle class values, wherever they come from. This is the category of people any society - if it promotes immigration at all - is panting for; because, whether we like it or not, social behaviour is partly 'inheritable'.
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This 'social conviction' is also the reason why Germans majoritarian "force their government to pay off debt", "forbid their government taking on any new debt" and "force their government ONLY enact social welfare programs that are pre-funded" (tryworkingforaliving, Jun 15th, 12:14).

"culturally similar people" is just a lame disguise of racism, because culture differs much more WITHIN (especially between age groups) than BETWEEN "cultures". A 20 year old in Munich tend to share culture much more with a 20 year old in Ankara or Shanghai or even Nairobi, than with an 80 year old in Munich. And an 80 year old in Munich, in fact, with memories of war and times before television, computers let alone smartphones, has probably a lot in common with an 40 year old in Nairobi but not much in common the 20 yo Munichian.
And then, aside from age cultures, there are huge socio-economic differences, and urban-rural cultural differences within a country.
Bottom line is, people replacing "race" with "culture" are only very thinly masking that what they really mean is not "culture" but rather, still, race.

Cultural differences between Uyghers and Han Chinese? Its mostly the ability to get work in a society that was once largely Uygher, but has been overtaken by Han immigration. Its been nasty and brutal on both sides, but its about good old fashioned discrimination, not differences in food and religion.

If citizens would force their governments to pay off all debt.
If citizens would forbid their governments taking on any new debt.
If citizens would force their governments ONLY enact social welfare programs that are "pre-funded"
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If we did all this, then living in a country with a declining population is not at all a bad thing. Lower crime, more green, and more space.
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An every expanding population has been forced upon us because we allowed our government to take on debt. We need to get back control of our governments. We need smaller governments with reduced spending and no debt.

We can give more rights to sexual minorities maybe that helps?
If Germans have population problem I am. It so sure. They just drew their own conclusions from the fact that for the country banksters are more important than parents. One must also be aware that as soon women get more rights they tend to limit their procreation rates and that is good because earth resources are limited.
Bottom line is this: German employers have cheap workers problem not skilled workers One.
Side remark: if one thinks immigration solves problems maybe one should think again. The history of human kind does not offer examples where this went without violence either against newcomers or against local population.

These numbers are laughable. 900,000, where do you get this info? USA had about 1 mil. in 2012 according to the official government report. Before you advise others on numbers, better check yours or include a credible resource.

Reuters reported May 7, 2013 (quote): An influx of people from crisis-hit southern European countries like Spain, Italy and Greece has led to the biggest surge in German immigration in nearly 20 years. The Federal Statistics Office said 1.081 million immigrants flocked to Germany last year, up 13 percent from 2011 and the highest number since 1995. Leading the way were arrivals from countries in eastern Europe and from southern euro zone countries struggling with recession and high unemployment as a result of the currency bloc's three-year old debt crisis. The number of immigrants coming from Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy rose by 40 percent or more compared to the prior year" (end quote). http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/07/us-germany-immigration-idUSBRE...

The real problems will start when people will no longer want to go to western Europe, and this time is coming closer day by day. What will the Londons and Parises do then, when the immigrants who built those cities no longer want to live in them, because they built their own ones?

Britain is the main victim of the Economist's ideology. Look at the mess that is Britain's demography today.
The British have begun to understand it but it is too late.
If you need skilled workers, train your workers
If you need more children fund kindergarten and open your schools longer.
Germany's population is stable and it is why their young have jobs.

Germany can import workers all it wants from Spain and Italy - its not like those countries are massively in debt to Germany is it? Oh right, they owe hundreds of billions that France and Germany are happily deluding themselves they will see again.

Germany does not import workers.
Quite the contrary Germany welcomes friendly and skilled people .
But as I wrote a several times: The language barrier for Southerners and French is too high and so they are avoiding Germany like the devil the holy water.
On the other hand there are waiting millions of Russians and people
in the East of Europe who are not hating Germany and its culture and language but who do admire Germany and who are excellently educated and above all : they do speak German.
So German economy will always prefer to take young people from the Eastern countries especially the German industry made excellent experiences with them.
So the Southerners are in real competition with their mates from the East who are not only educated on the same level but also do speak fluent German and who are willing to integrate.
So I fear the Southerners will be the losers a second time.

The TE names only three ways in which Germany can solve its demographic problem: 1.persuade (read: "force") women to work more outside their homes, 2. persuade (read: "force") elderly people to continue to participate in the workforce up to an (even) higher age than now, and 3. Attracting (even) more immigrants.
Concerning the latter point: It's known to every one, that the decent, competent and hardworking Spanish family shown in the film clip, belongs rather to the exceptions that to the rule, unfortunately so.
In fact, most immigrants are unlikely to come from Spain, Poland or any other European country, as demographic problems are rampant in all of Europe, and most are not likely to be as skilled as this man is, as a lack of (chances to) education and/or training is a serious but common problem in most countries of the world.
It's outrageous that TE doesn't (want to) mention the best and most obvious solution: Stimulate the birth rate among Germans, by making it -through tax cuts and benefits- easier for young couples to start families, while both partners can continue to pursue a career if they wish to. This model is already successfully at work in France and in all the Nordic countries. Maybe it's still considered "not PC enough" to wish for Germans to have more children? Why get stuck in the demons of the past? Times have changed! The whole of Europe will be better off with a young,harmonious and dynamic Germany in its midst, than a fragmented and ageing one.

Prometeus: "... by making it -through tax cuts and benefits- easier for young couples to start families, while both partners can continue to pursue a career if they wish to."

I do not believe that this is the reason for Germany's low birth rate. In this respect Germany is probably more family-orientated than most Western countries with higher birthrates.

The country offers 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave to either parent, so-called "partner months". Moreover, couples can take up to 12 months parental leave with an income compensation of 65 percent.

Additionally there are two "partner months" if both parents participate in 'education time'. Parental benefits total up to 14 months if one parent looks after the child 'full time' and therefore can't work or can only work part time.

Unpaid paternal leave with 'same-job-guarantee' is offered in Germany until the child turns three. Tax cuts for families is taken for grated in Germany. German families with 3 children don't pay income tax at all up to a yearly income of or below €21,000 ($27,930).

Furthermore, unlike the United States, in Germany employees have the right to fully paid sick leave, not only when they are personally sick, but also when one of their little children gets sick.

To Americans, who have a much higher birthrate than the Germans, all this sounds like a 'family & children paradise'. So, "stimulating the birth rate among Germans, by making it -through tax cuts and benefits- easier for young couples to start families" (Prometeus) can't be the reason for the unwillingness of young Germans to reproduce.

The reasons are rather to be found in the role German family courts and family offices have 'reserved' for non-custody fathers after separation or divorce.

It is really bizarre that the commentator doesn't propose one of the other mechanisms that politicians should encourage: an increase in birth rates. Children bring not only a mouth to feed, but also a mind to think and create new solutions and wealth to a society (besides the fact that they will understand and integrate easily in German society).

In Germany it's foremost the young men who are unwilling to enter into the bonds of parenthood, as surveys (and the daily reality) are proving.
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Germany is, as I have experienced, probably one of the most 'militant feminist' countries' in the world, where men, married or unmarried, have almost no chance to receive equal custody rights over jointly parented children after a divorce.
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Since the divorce/marriage ratio in percent is still relatively high in Germany (approx 50%, about the same as in the U.S.) and given that most couples don't bother anymore to get a marriage license, the chances that a father ends up as a "chained child-support slave", deprived of his basic rights as a father, are extremely high there.
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In Germany, mothers can block or inhibit the father from contact with the children - unpunished. Not only that the mothers are often allowed to 'use' the joint children as instruments of their personal revenge, quasi as emotional pay-back tools, they also can berate the father publicly in the presence of children without any judicial consequences.
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I believe that their are more mothers who teach or force their children unpunished to fear or to reject their father than in any other Western society.
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The low birth-rate in Germany must be seen against this social and legal backdrop: There are just not enough (intelligent) young men ready anymore to accept this blatant unjustness.

I picked up two leaflets while waiting in the dentist the other day- one "The Rights of Unmarried Fathers", which had "none" repeated in bold print several times- unless agreed to by the mother (which I interpreted as legalized kidnapping); the other "The Responsibilities of Parents" which stressed that fathers were legally required to support their children whether granted access or not.

The whole thing smells like a punitive feminist racket- seriously, who would bother?

By law custody and visitation rights are the same in Germany for divorced fathers and fathers who weren't married to the mother. On the surface this looks good, since most separated couples receive 'on paper' joint custody.

However 'joint custody' doesn't mean very much in Germany because it refers only to a child's joint representation at occasions where both parents signature is needed. The 'physical custody', the right to decide where the child has to live, is with the mother as a rule.

It is a very nice video, showing some advantages and difficulties in free movement of people.
I completely disagree with the solution and conclusion though.
Fewer people in itself should be a goal for our societies, instead of more people. Our world is grossly overpopulated and it would be good for everyone with fewer people. But our grossly wrong economic system demand more and more people, because that is good for economic growth. The whole economic model in itself is a fallacy.
There is no problems with skills in Germany in the future, the problem is education. There are lots of unskilled people in Germany who could if they had the education be skilled. These people now work in shops and restaurants and other services. Lots of skilled people also have the wrong skills. Germany is full of bankmen and financial tricksters. These talented people would be better to train in useful skills.
The narrator continues to say that the problem is in Germany, that Germany will have less and less workers will the UK and France will have a growing population. That is the problem, the growing population is the problem. France and the UK are the ones that will have problems. The UK in particular is already very overpopulated. Besides having a big working population in itself is no good if all those work at McDonalds to serve up the rest of the population on deadly food, or work in the finance industry in London to steal money from all the productive workers around the world.
Our main demographic challenge is how we can reduce our population while managing to take care of a increasing percentage of old people who are not contributing to the current economic activity.
Personally I think the solutions are very very easy. We simply need to organise our society in a completely different way. We need to change our goals and manage our society in a far more efficient way. No doubt technology will play its role in such a transformation, but technology itself will only come third in importance to management and organisation. To be able to manage our society well and organise things well, we first need to come to the realisation that there is something wrong with todays society, we need to redefine our goals and rewrite out methods.
If we do that, I have absolute no doubt it will be incredibly easy to take care of a shrinking working population and increase the well being of everyone, the old and the young.
As long as we are a reactive society instead of a proactive society that will ofcourse never happen. And we can never be a proactive society as long as the wish to get elected in the next election stands higher than the desire to do what is right and necessary.

I can assure that a vast majority of this "skill shortage" is completely fake. They actually need "skills" who are ready to work for pittance. With this objective, German Mittelstands are exploring the last shores for slave labour, working at minimum wage. All in all, European version of China. Germany is Shanghai, Spain and East Europe are Yunan.

According to these offers, the income in Germany for skilled electricians in 2008 (at the peak of the global economic crisis) were anything between €20,000 and €49,000. Since then the wages for electricians rose by an average of 4.5% per year.
that

It seems you've never heard in microeconomics that supply and demand are the responsible denominators for pricing.

In a free market economy, like Germany's, this applies also to the price of labor, whereby supply and demand play the most important role in wage design - at least ever after 2004, with the implementation of 'Agenda 2010' under the Schroeder administration.